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Synchronicity

It is a word that has been plaguing my vocabulary for a year. Webster’s defines it as the quality or fact of being synchronous or the coincidental occurrence of events that seem related but are not.

Lots of help, huh?

Explaining synchronicity in action is easier. It is always seeing the same numbers when you look at the time, pay for something, or just notice throughout the day. Thinking of someone and having them call. The mass consciousness if you will of sharing similar ideas/thoughts with a stranger. As in movies coming out within months of each other that share similar plot lines or themes.

Two years ago, I went to a large writing conference 300 miles away from my hometown with the goal of meeting a critique partner. They didn’t need to live by me after all, just have email. Seemed a no brainer considering this was a large event spread over 4 days. Yet the search fizzled in frustration. I gave up. Deciding instead to enjoy the moment and go with the flow of where it took me I found two critique partners. Turns out, I had been bumping into one at home but we never connected and the other lived nearby. Apparently, we all needed to drive 300 miles to attend this particular conference to meet and form you guessed it, the Townie Critics.

Synchronicity also applies to our writing worlds. Unrelated ideas converge becoming solid threads and writing themes. Even those crazy cat videos, the 30-second ones you watched twice because it made you laugh can be more than just an internet time suck.

They may spark an idea somewhere down the road that leads to a place you never imagined you would go. Making them far from the wasted writing time, you once believed them to be. That is the thing about synchronicity. None of us ever knows if the “now” we are in is really the right time, right place or if that “now” is merely the stepping stone leading up to it.

That is synchronicity in a nutshell. Being in the right place at the right time, open to possibilities but not dependent on an outcome, because joy of the moment is what rules the flow of events. So go ahead, fall down that internet rabbit hole, get lost in detoured plots, and unthreaded dead ends. Waste time. Synchronicity may be waiting for you.